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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27260344">Years</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tedthedead/pseuds/tedthedead'>tedthedead</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Hurt/Comfort</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:28:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,216</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27260344</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tedthedead/pseuds/tedthedead</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens to a person who can always heal, and will always live? What happens to a person who watches every person she loves die?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Years</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sakura’s hands ached in her pockets, body bracing uncomfortably in the cold wind that liked to dance around this far up in the sky. The horizon was teasing her, close enough to familiar to make her stomach twist while her eyes climbed the new buildings in the very center of town.</p><p>It wasn’t that it hurt, the pain never really stopped at all and had long since faded into a numb ache at the very base of Sakura’s skull, one that lived and breathed with the rest of her. The problem, Sakura thought, was that she had forgotten about the pain at all. Pain was absolutely nothing to her anymore, it was only more of the same, more of that unavoidable circumstance Sakura had sworn to live her life in, day in and day out, until she would eventually die.</p><p>            That was where the second problem came to life, growing old in Sakura’s bones with every passing year. Her hands, her marvelous, magical, capable hands that had brought so many back from the brink of death, did not reflect their years the way that they should have. They flexed with a stolen youth, in the same way her heart ached with untold age.</p><p>            She understood Tsunade more now, Sakura thought, as she sat on the edge of what still remained of the Hokage Mountain. When the years kept coming, and never stopped coming, it was easier to burn the edges smooth with the fire of clear liquor. The drunker you are, the less you remember, and you can eventually drink enough to forget that everyone you’ve loved is old and rotting in their plush-lined caskets, enough to forget that no one knows you anymore because you’re far too old, and you’ve become something they only remember these days, a walking memory wearing a much younger woman’s face, a face that had been her own, once upon a time, but not anymore, not for a long time now.</p><p>            Sakura settled into the cold stone she sat on, ignoring the way the cold grew discomfort in her hip joints.</p><p>            Tsunade had died first, but she had been so far off for such a long time already, partying her golden years away on the light-strewn beaches of the Land of the Crescent Moon. Sakura had been happy for her, more than anything else, just relieved that the woman she had learned from and loved so dearly had lived out her end in the way she had always wanted. Shizune had never come back, as if unable to confront the heat of Konoha without the cool champagne-bubble laugh of her mistress, and Sakura knew she must be dead, but when or how were questions she couldn’t answer. Naruto had become Hokage in her place, and Sakura thought everything was okay then.</p><p>            Sai had been next, leaving their lives as unexpectedly as he had come, body found in pieces and bloodstained parchment scrolls returned to a swollen bellied Ino, whose water had broken on Sakura’s shoes the moment she learned. Sakura had delivered the baby, keeping it alive even though it was born too early– a life lost, a life saved.</p><p>            Sasuke had been next, killed right beside Sakura, both eyes impaled with shiny kunai that still smelled of the sharpening stone, his dying screams echoing in her chest every night since, rumbling around in her belly and taking their baby into the next world with him. She’d stumbled in through the front gates of Konoha two sunsets later, blood dried into widowed stains in her clothes. Sakura had healed her wounds but could not bear to clean herself. The blood, it was all she had left of her lover, of her child. She never left the city walls again.</p><p>            Then it was Kakashi, just gone. He had come to her office to be medically cleared for a mission, had teased her with a copy of Icha Icha propped up in her office, and never come back. Sakura suspected that Naruto knew more than he let on, but she didn’t ask. She just began to light a fourth stick of incense every evening at sunset, begging, praying, asking for a miracle with that awful green book clamped between her hands like a Bible, but he never, ever came back.</p><p>            Then there were uneventful years, passed in absent mourning, hospital paperwork, and babysitting Ino’s tiny blonde-haired son, where everyone lived and nobody died, and Sakura again thought everything was okay, even if she felt like her life had been paused in the middle of everyone else’s, her skin staying too soft for the years gone by, her pain staying too raw no matter the passage of time. She was alone, she was beautiful, and she was no longer a person but memorial walking.</p><p>            Sakura fidgeted in the cold, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and lighting one, spewing out smoke into the wind and watching it disappear into the distance.</p><p>            Shikamaru had been the first of a long string of deaths, ones resulting from lives lived too fast in bodies used too hard, heart giving out in a lazy, tired fashion while he was sleeping peacefully in a sun-soaked field. Chōji followed, a heart attack in the middle of a bellowing laugh, happening so soon after Shikamaru that it made Sakura think, affectionately, that it was so the best friends could go be lazy pieces of shit together in the next life. Then it was Akamaru, and Kiba, at the same time, living and dying, together always. More years passed, the people along with them, until even the children Sakura had delivered started to feel twinges of pain in their joints, and it was just Sakura and Hinata left.</p><p>            They had cried together over Naruto when he died, weeping and screaming with the effort of embedding the Nine-tails into Hinata’s granddaughter, an ink-haired little thing that cried in Himawari’s arms, that cried louder when the transfer didn’t take. That stopped crying right as hell truly exploded, and then they were all dead except for Sakura, except for Sakura and the shattered remnants of a city. War reborn, war killed again, and a city rebuilds.</p><p>            Years, many many years, they all passed around her, time only written in the length of her hair and tiredness in her eyes, and Sakura still walked in agelessness, keeping others alive as some sort of penance. So many years, so many lives prolonged as payment for keeping her own. No one left alive that Sakura recognized, just their gravestones, just the dozens of incense sticks glowing in front of her every evening.</p><p>            Sakura finished her cigarette and flicked it into the dark, watching it flutter down into the ether. Disfigured, broken features of Kakashi’s carved face glowed as the cigarette swirled down. She wondered if, had Kakashi’s body ever been found, ever been brought home, would she have been able to see his face? Would it still have been as beautiful as the older girls had always said, even after the violent caress of death?</p><p>            Sakura closed her eyes and stood, letting the wind rock her back and forth over the edge.</p><p> </p><p>            Too many years.</p><p> </p><p>            As Sakura passed his face, she touched Kakashi’s cheek.</p><p> </p><p>            “Now we’ve all gone,” she whispered, words swallowed by the rushing of air.</p><p>           </p>
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